Identity and tasks

1. The identity of the Provincial Delegate for Missionary Animation 61

•   The Provincial Delegate for Missionary Animation is the witness to and promoter of the Province’s commitment to the mission ad gentes.

•   “To live and work together is for us Salesians a fundamental requirement and a sure way of fulfilling our vocation”. 62 To be a true work o evangelizacion, missionary animation is of its nature communal. The DIAM must be aware of this and strive to work in harmony with all the oher organism of provincial animation.

•   His deep ecclesial sense makes him a person capable of the efficacious organization of various initiatives, which can create a healthy missionary concern within pastoral work, to urge it to get out of its hidebound horizons and point to new ones.

•   The DIAM, like every Salesian, “accepts responsibility for his own formation”.63 In addition to this personal qualities and talents, he will try to acquire other skills, e.g.: Knowledge of interreligious and intercultural contexts, the ability to communicate and to conduct reflections on missionary facts.

59 VIGANó E., o.c. p.35

60 RM 2. 30;

61. For this chapter we refer the reader in particular to: MELIDA A., La figura del Delegado inspectorial para la Animación misionera: responsabilidades, competencias, método, in Animación Misionera Salesiana, Primer encuentro de Delegados Inspectoriales de América Latina. Lima – 1991. Rome, 1991. La propuesta pastoral de la Animación Misionera Salesiana. Delegación Nacional Salesiana de Pastoral Juvenil. Madrid, 1991.

62 C49

63 C99

The tasks of the Provincial Delegate for Missionary Animation

To attain the objectives indicated in the preceding chapter, the Provincial Delegate assumes the task of translating them into strategies and interventions in the provincial programming of his own sector.

The tasks which derive from this first objective are:

•   To bear witness to his own faith by observing the options and motivations which prompt us to assume a certain style of life.

What qualifies animation is not only the practical details but the ability to put across, through the eloquent language of his own existence, the values he wants to transmit and the experience in which he wants to involve those he is addressing: “One is a missionary first of all through what one is, before being so through what he says or does”; 64

•   To promote information and the knowledge of missionary activity in the cultural and social contexts of other peoples, whit in regard to the possibilities and difficulties met with in evangelization and the work of the missionaries. 65 And so it will be useful:

•   to set up a provincial Documentation Centre, or database, make it available for initiatives of missionary animation, and encourage its use within the educative community as a source of information;

•   to encourage an updated knowledge of experiences of missionary life in the Church and in the Congregation through provincial newsletters, local Salesian Bulletins, and in particular through the “good night” ( or the “good morning”) on the 11^th of each month, recalling the first missionary expedition; 66

•   the foster the production of publications and audiovisuals, the setting up of mini-projects, and subscriptions to easy consultation of missionary reviews;

•   to promote in particular way the production of teaching aids concerning themes of development, worldwide attitudes, and interreligious dialogue;

•   to collaborate with missionary organism of the local Church for a reciprocal enrichment as regards information, formation and the joint realization of activities.

•   Maintain contact with missionaries of one’s own Province, or those passing through. This implies:

  •   Letting the local communities of the Province know in good time when there are missionaries passing through, so that they can invite them as living and eloquent witnesses of the mission ad gentes, so that by telling the story of their decision ad vitam, they may communicate the joy of their self-giving, pass on the search for truth, and provide authoritative documentation of transforming power of the Gospel. 67

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64 RM 23; cf. GC24, 151; VIGANÒ E., o.c. p.35

65 cf. AMS, p. 16

66 To this end use can be made of materials already existing, e.g. those of the VIS (International Volunteer Movement for Development) via Appia Antica, 124, 00179 Rome.

67 cf. VECCHI J.E., o.c. p. 297.

•   Programming with them at provincial level meetings, forums, days of missionary formation, etc.;

•   Keeping missionary confreres of Province informed about courses of missiology and sessions of missionary formation in the various Study Centres and Universities, and about meetings for formation and verification organized for resident missionaries;

•   Knowing and keeping contact with the families of missionaries of the Province, organizing meetings with them and the Salesian Family for the sharing of ideals and missionary information.

•   Revive the sense of belonging to the one mission of the Church and the Congregation.

For this purpose, the Delegate will take care to form and inform the confreres and Groups of the Salesian Family in the Province on:

• Reflections, proposals and eventual directives coming from the Centre of the Congregation:

  • Letters of the Rector Mayor about the Missions;

  • Initiatives, publications and guidelines from the Councillor for the Missions and his Department.

  • Projects for development proposed for the World and Salesian Mission Days.

  • Proposals for ongoing formation of missionaries at world level.

•  Initiatives of missionary formation coordinated with the youth pastoral team and other branches of the Salesian Family, in particular those of a missionary character and those involving responsible involvement in strategies in areas most at risk or great social need.

• Manifestations, celebrations and ecclesial gatherings of a missionary kind, particularly those of national branch of the Pontifical Missionary Union, of other missionary Congregations, the national and diocesan Caritas organization, local committees for justice and peace, etc.

Fostering the formation of all members of the EPC, so that they can give living witness, and spread and communicate their own faith.

  The information on missionary activity goes beyond satisfying curiosity and occasional interest. It stimulates a universal outlook, educates to reflection on the significance of facts, problems and cultures which are interrelated, and throws light on the perception of the religious experience present in peoples as a universal search for the absolute even to the understanding of history in which God is present as guide. 68

 In the formation sector, the task of the DIAM extend to both the contents the ways they can be accessed:

• Formation of a missionary awareness ad gentes, such that each one will know he has been sent to radiate his own faith and feel an interior force compelling him to communicate

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cf. ID, p.296

the others the reason for his hope: “An obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not

proclaim the Gospel”.

69 For this purpose use should be made of the outstanding parts

of the liturgical year, the missionary month of October, the salesian world missions day

(DOMISAL), missionary departures, etc.

• See to it that programs of initial and ongoing formation of the EPC, specific themes of systematic missiology are included, e.g. the mission of the Church, approach to ecumenism, interreligious dialogue and inculturation, history of the salesian mission, typical missionary figures, etc.

• Emphasize the explicit missionary catechetical content in process of the education of young people to the faith, and in particular:

The urgency of the Kingdom, the universal call of men to salvation, the mission of the

Church to be the “sign and instrument” of such a vocation in the world, learning the

“ways of the mission: poverty, meekness, acceptance of suffering and persecutions,the

desire for justice and peace, in other words the Beatitudes, lived in apostolic life.” 70

•  Foster initiatives of solidarity aimed at creating new ethical models of behaviour, because “faith without works is dead”. 71

• Propose a spiritual process of ongoing conversion by comparing one’s personal life with the paschal kerigma: such an attitude in essential for every kind or new evangelization, by making one’s witness a free and joyful presentation of the faith. For this purpose it will be useful to organize days of missionary spirituality or retreats animated by missionaries or by specialists in missiology.

Propose practical ways for facilitating in the educative community the making for a commitment to the missions ad gentes.

Communication and formation to the missionary dimension ad gentes is based on concrete proposals and structures for creating and sustaining attitudes of ecclesial membership, and of service and commitment to the missions. And so he Provincial Delegate for Missionary Animation will have the task of:

•   Drawing up and presenting to the EPC a simple, realistic and concrete PROJECT FOR MISSIONARY ANIMATION. Such a project:

• Will be integrated into (and not merely joined to) the Salesian Educative and Pastoral Project at provincial and local level 72 to provide a re-reading from the standpoint of the missions ad gentes.

• Will be able to put forward and verify obligations, activities and experience of openness and mentality of the universal Church, by educating to attitudes of freely given service and long term commitment in frontier mission work.

• Will take account of the indications of the Document “Educating to the Missionary Dimension” in both the elaboration of the above-mentioned Project and in meetings for missionary youth movement.

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69 1 Cor 9,16; cf. 1 Pt 3,15; AMS, p.17.

70 RM 91; cf. Mt 5,1-12.

71 Jas 2,17 .

72  cf. EMD, pp. 45-46.

•   Fostering the creation and development of missionary groups, ensuring that:

• They work within the Salesian Youth Movement to keep alive in the young people and animators the awareness, openness and ability to respond to the most needy sectors of their own geographical area, and towards work on the frontiers of the mission ad gentes 74

• They have a specific formation based on the contents of the mission ad gentes, even thougt they may have to assume different time, forms and deadline, in accordance with local requirements. They can be developed as:

• Groups for reflection and study, to analyze more deeply the information they receive and make better known the missionary activity of the universal Church, cultures and religions of peoples far away and immigrants, dangerous, frontier contexts where the missionaries are most at risk, etc.

• Working groups to coordinate the realization of specific projects and mini-objectives, maintaining contacts with persons or countries and spreading knowledge of their concrete reality. 75

“The reawakening of missionary awareness to obtain new levels of faith and commitment is typical of groups and movements which have a specific interest for the missions, the development of peoples, and international collaboration: missionary experience then becomes transformed into a process of growth and maturing in the faith”. 76

• Encouraging and developing the salesian missionary volunteer movement within the overall volunteer movement promoted by the Province. 77

For this he DIAM, in agreement with the Provincial Delegate for the Volunteer Movement, must:

• Ensure that the candidates volunteering for the missions follow a formative process of at least a year’s duration, in line with existing programs at national and interprovincial level.

• Prepare volunteer missionaries as to how they must insert themselves into the Province receiving them, on their willingness to listen, their “openness to world horizons, to intercultural situations, to interreligious and ecumenical dialogue”, and on the space to be reserved for more direct commitment on the frontier of evangelization. 78

• Prepare with the community accepting the volunteers a program of formation and work, and follow up the volunteers during their experience.

• Help the communities receiving the volunteers to settle with equity and discretion some conditions inherent in their lives, such as a minimum salary, their living conditions, savings, travelling details, journey home, etc.

• Keep in contact with the volunteers even after their return, so that they can be active witnesses in the Christian community which sent them, and bring the richness of their experience to the formation of other volunteers and the animation of missionary groups.

• Sensitize the EPC to keep always in mind a “ culture of volunteer work”, emphasizing that:

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74 cf. EMD, p. 47; VIS, p. 8.

75 cf. AMS, pp. 22-23.

76 VECCHI J.E., o.c. pp. 294-295.

77 cf. Salesian Volunteer Movement and Mission, Rome 1997.

78 cf. ibid. p.17.

• The volunteer missionary movement makes better understood “ the linkage and

exchange of riches between Christian communities realized through volunteer

work, which constitutes the human bridge which makes reciprocal relationship

possible”. 79

• The salesian missionary movement is the most mature expression of the scope of salesian formation; it makes concrete at a high level Don Bosco’s idea of the cooperator. 80

• Involve the EPC in the celebration of the Salesian and World Missionary Days. For this purpose it will be useful:

• To see that each of these “days” is preceded by a suitable preparation in all local communities, involving those in charge of missionary formation and appealing to their creativity.

•   To make use of the various means available for the purpose: the material sent out by the Missions Department, the multiplication of items contained therein or the result of personal creativity, the provincial newsletter, the local salesian bulletin, and aids put out by the Pontifical Missionary Union.

•   To sensitize and educate the Christian community and the young members in particular, to the duty of contribution even financially to missionary work, giving reasons for specific projects, thanking those making offerings, and informing them of the projects concerned.